[fic] The Fair Belle [part 1]
Title: The Fair Belle
Author: etre_sans_age
Rating: NC-17
Characters: America/France
Warnings: sexual situations; "genderbend" AU
Wordcount: 3,712
Author's Notes: Reposted from the kink meme. For the prompt - In the time of the cowboys and the U.S. expansion West, French prostitutes were deported out of France and some moved the West to become a real hit with American cowboys, settlers, miners, etc. because there was so few women.
So France, a prostitute in the West, gets a "visit" from a cowboy America. No redeeming factor in this fic.
So much for writing the stuff I said I was going to write, I promise I have been working on them, I simply haven't come up with a good plot to tie things together yet. Not that this has a good plot either, I just have a thing for cowboys. Obviously.
The first thing he notices is her height. He isn’t short by any means, but she doesn’t need to crane her neck to look him in the eye, and that even without the added lift of her heeled boots. Maybe she is not exactly pretty - more striking, foreign, with heavy-lidded blue eyes and golden hair elaborately arranged with feathers and silk flowers, a strong profile marked by a long straight nose and angled jawline. She reminds him of a catamount, beautiful, unknowable, dangerous… And he is a fool for falling in love with a whore.
He feels out of place here, surrounded by wealthy gentleman and elegant courtesans, only a humble cowboy who managed to save up a bit of extra cash, but he sweeps off his hat as she approaches, sketching a quick bow.
“Bonsoir, monsieur Jones,” she murmurs huskily from behind a lace fan, curtsying slightly. “How may I be of service tonight?”
He grins at her and says, “Well, I ain’t no monsieur, miss. You can just call me Alfred or Al, I sure as heck won’t mind.”
She lowers the fan, and her smile is enigmatic. “Certainly, Al. My name is Frances, and I am honored to be your companion for the night.”
Holding out a gloved hand for him to take, she then steers him towards a private nook, where they may drink and converse before getting around to their intended transaction. The conversation usually only lasts a few minutes, Blonde Marie’s girls are ever in high demand, but time somehow slips away as the young man promptly regales her with his adventures on the cattle trails. It sounds like Alfred F. Jones has done just about everything there is to do in the wilds of the West, trying his hand at herding longhorns and taming broncos, traveling from the Texas hills to the Kansas plains, and what he has lived through would fill up more than one lifetime, and he is just eighteen years old. Frances knows only the brothel in Paris, the ship that brought her to America, the endless series of trains that abandoned her here in the parlor houses, but for him, she laughs and gasps and sighs and occasionally asks for the meaning of a word she does not know. Her smiles are almost not faked, and he feels like a king.
Or maybe it’s just the champagne talking, but he doesn’t give a damn about that, either.
They make it up to her room eventually, prompted by a meaningful glare from the madame. Alfred gallantly scoops her into his arms, grunting a little at her weight and the way her stiff petticoats fluff into his face. Frances plants a kiss on his cheek, causing him to blush and stumble, and they collapse onto the bed in a shower of laughter.
Alfred tells her she's beautiful and smothers her face with kisses because he just can’t get enough of how she smells and tastes and feels underneath him. He had been thinking of her since he first arrived into town and saw her tossing stale cake crumbs to the doves in the grey light of dawn, had loved her since then with all the wild heedless passion his heart possessed.
Her eyes glitter wickedly in the candlelight as she runs her hands down his sides, and that soft, sensual chuckle hums through his skin and bones like wildfire. Suddenly, Frances curls up and wrestles him onto his back with surprising strength, and though he blinks in confusion to see her smiling down at him, he thinks that he’s gonna like this. He’s never even met a French person before, at most a Creole or two from the bayous, but he is impressed, and interested. Real interested…
“Is this your first time here, Al?” Frances asks as she slips the headdress out of her hair, letting the wheat-blonde waves cascade over her white shoulders. She then peels her gloves off with slow deliberate movements while Alfred stares and stares and tries to make his mouth work again.
“Y-yeah,” he admits, trying to look nonchalant, but the weight of her body centered on his groin is making this difficult, and he barely hears her reassuring him that she is a professional over the sound of his thudding heart. Still a little giddy from the champagne, Alfred goes nearly cross-eyed watching her untie the black ribbon around his collar and then slide it free.
“Please, hold your hands up,” she whispers, dangling the ribbon in between her slender fingers.
“Huh? Err… Oh. Oh, right.”
He reluctantly moves his hands from where they are resting at her corseted waist, and gracefully, Frances binds his wrists to the iron railing of the bedstead, knotting the tie just loose enough to let the blood circulate. If Alfred hadn’t been blushing before, he sure is now, and he wonders if it’s not too late to say this is actually his first time with a woman, ever. But despite the nervous fluttering in his stomach, he is still grinning, bold as brass, and Frances smiles encouragingly at him in return.
With her knees on either side of his waist, she arches over him and brushes her lips against his, just the lightest hint of a kiss, and Alfred can’t help himself from straining at his bonds, needing to take her into his arms. Murmuring something in French, she places a hand on his chest to hold him down, causing him to pout a little as he falls back onto the pillows. Such adorable excitability from her handsome customer does not go unnoticed, and for the first time in a long time, Frances decides to indulge herself. To hell with Marie; for now, she will be his lover and no one else’s.
Even though he could probably break free of the tie at any time, Alfred is much too busy watching Frances as she kisses a line down his bared chest. He shudders each time her warm lips press against his skin, he groans aloud each time her teeth nip at his flesh, and when she finally reaches the trail of blond hair at the hem of his jeans, his cock is straining painfully hard against the denim.
She glances up and catches his wide-eyed gaze, then rubs the palm of her hand hard against his groin, and Alfred swears frantically under his breath because that felt too damn good to be real.
“Oh God, Frances,” he mumbles, bucking his hips instinctively.
Saying nothing in reply, Frances starts to unbuckle his belt and unfastening his jeans, sliding the material away just enough to free his erection from its confines. The cool air brushing against his cock makes Alfred hiss a little, and Frances’ next move makes him react even more violently.
“H-hey, what are you doing?!” he chokes out, and she blinks at him in faux innocence, fingers still wrapped around his length.
“What you are paying me to do, my darling.” He may be just a boy, but dear sweet Alfred is definitely a man where it counts most, Frances thinks, and she moves her hand admiringly up his erection, imagining how wonderful it would feel deep inside her.
Alfred tries to keep the embarrassing whiny noises from tumbling out of his mouth, but the way she is stroking and pumping away, her fingers squeezing a tight loop around his erection, it’s so much better than his own hand, and he is afraid he’s going to come right now. At last, Frances lets go, that gorgeous smile still lingering on her cherry red lips, and he doesn’t get to finish breathing a sigh of relief before she goes down on him in a creak of whalebone and rustle of petticoats. She plies her tongue against his straining cock, lapping up the precum dripping down the underside, and when she hums in enjoyment of this task, Alfred gasps and curses again as he yanks at the piece of cloth keeping his arms trussed up and away from her. He can’t even get out the words to beg for more, but he doesn’t need to, because Frances senses he is close, and she obliges him by wrapping her lips around the head of his cock and sucking as she takes more and more of him into her mouth. She moves her head back a little for every time she inches forward, hollowing her cheeks and pressing hard against the salty flesh with her tongue, and she looks up to see his flushed pretty face, his sky-blue eyes now squeezed shut, his mouth in the shape of an “oh” as he groans in pleasure.
Then Alfred comes, yelling Frances’ name hoarsely as he jerks and shudders and spills into her hot, welcoming throat, and she swallows around his cock as she drinks him down. He is panting so hard for breath when he collapses onto the mattress, his vision still full of stars, his bones turned into molasses.
“Well… fuck, that was… that was amazing, Frances,” he says breathlessly, laughing a little.
Frances does not answer, she instead finishes licking him clean, kisses his softening cock one last time and allows herself a few seconds to compose herself. Tucking her hair back behind her ear, she runs her tongue over her teeth and lips, and Alfred has to bite back another whimper at such a natural, sensual gesture.
“It was my pleasure, cher Alfred,” she finally murmurs, regarding him through long pale lashes, and just the way she says his name is like another orgasm in itself.
Though he struggles against sleep, Alfred can not keep his eyes from closing, his tense muscles relaxing, and the last thing he remembers is Frances untying his arms and rubbing the feeling back into his hands, and he drowsily wonders how she got to become a whore in the first place with such a flat chest.
He dreams of making love to her, straddled in his lap, moving deliciously slow upon his erection amidst the drifts of petticoats, uttering quiet breathy gasps as she lifts herself up and then pushes back down hard. Alfred is not quite so poised, and he squeezes her thin body close, growling as she clenches around him, savoring the strange and incredible feeling of being inside her like this. Thankfully, it isn’t long before her breaths become shallower and more erratic, movements growing increasingly unrestrained once she frees herself from the last bit of self-possession that had marked her actions this night. In the dim light, she shimmers like liquid gold, and he grazes his teeth against her exposed throat, feeling rather than hearing her husky, sultry moans as they move together, ever closer.
A beautiful thing when he rocks his hips, pushing deep into her one last time, crying out as he releases, when her eyes snap open upon reaching climax, and their breaths intermingle in each other’s desperate open-mouthed kisses as they float back down to reality.
Perhaps stupidly, he confesses that he loves her in the silence afterwards, but Frances simply smiles, her eyes crinkling at the corners in genuine happiness. She nods and says something in French that he hopes means “I love you, too,” but more likely means “You are an idiot.”
He’ll take either one.
The dream ends abruptly as Frances shakes him awake, hair flawlessly rearranged, face again powdered white, lips a stunning scarlet. She tells him he must leave now, she expects another whore and her patron will be wanting to use this room soon. His brain can barely function as he fumbles in his vest and hands her a small pouch full of gold dust, which she tucks away into her bodice with a whispered thanks. Unable to resist the temptation, Alfred leans forward to kiss her, and even though her eyes widen slightly, she lets him press his lips against her own soft mouth. Then she breaks the kiss and turns away abruptly, leaving him stumbling after her.
Downstairs in the main parlor, Frances concludes their business in a low, crisp tone, and though she invites him to come back anytime, her guarded expression does not show much hope of that occurring. Still in a daze, Alfred bids her farewell, and zombie-like, shuffles off to his own room at the inn across the street, to sleep the rest of the night hours alone.
He remembers when he wakes up late the next morning, as his belly growls loudly for sustenance and his groin feels like it’s been pounded into shreds by a hammer. It’s a good pain, he tells himself, because it means he is now a man, thanks to the attentions of the sweetest belle in the entire West.
The other cowboys from the cattle drive nod and wink at Alfred when they see him at breakfast, occasionally slapping him on the back and making him wince, which in turn makes them laugh. They rib him mercilessly about his good luck, to have the balls to get into Blonde Marie’s and leave with them as well, but for once he only grins and does not boast, out of a need to keep that night to himself.
“Hah, well, as long as you didn’t make the mistake of fallin’ in love with her,” one of them teases.
“Better to kick a rattlesnake than to love a whore,” another man quips, to the general agreement of the others. “At least the rattlesnake won’t rob ya blind!”
Still laughing amongst themselves, the cowboys leave him to his meal, but the sausage and cornbread sit in his stomach like a lump of rock. Alfred doesn’t disbelieve them, he hasn’t survived this long by being that stupid. Yet whenever he closes his eyes, he sees Frances with him, in a home they’ve made for themselves, happy and free and loved.
So what if it’s only a dream, why shouldn’t he try to make it come true?
The plan might have worked if Frances apparently existed. Alfred never sees her again after that night, and the only one who goes out to feed the doves at dawn is a stubbly-bearded man he thinks might be the cook. Not that he has been watching the parlor house that religiously, he just happens to ride by it after running early morning errands.
The cook waves to him once or twice during these encounters, and he waves back politely, but the man is not Frances.
Then it occurs to Alfred that he ought to ask the belles if they knew where their sister disappeared to. He catches two of them as they walk through town in their fashionable Parisian dresses and parasols, but they do not know a tall twenty-something prostitute with blond hair and blue eyes by the name of Frances. Je ne sais pas, they murmur, and giggling, the girls ask if he would like their company instead. Alfred makes a noncommittal answer, still hoping to reunite with Frances, but he escorts them back to the parlor house anyway.
Once they arrive, he slips away from the girls and into the main room, looking eagerly at the crowd of pretty faces. Not seeing Frances anywhere, Alfred bounds up the stairs to find the room she had taken him to, the one at the end of the hall, he recalls, but the lights are off and the door is locked. He asks a passing servant about the owner of the room, where she might be, but the girl shrugs.
“None of the ladies use that room, sir. It is reserved for the Count, and what company he keeps.”
Everything about this is making less and less sense, and he wonders if he had paid a month’s worth of salary for a fantasy. “The Count?” he repeats dumbly.
“Oui, the Count.” It is the madame herself, and Alfred is hard put to not shrink under the coldness of her glare. She says, “Sir, if you do not have the money to hire one of my girls tonight, then please remove yourself. You are disrupting my business with your foolishness.”
He frowns, but is not deterred from his mission. “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but I have to find Frances, and no one is telling me anything! Please, is there any way you can help me?”
Blonde Marie snaps her fan shut in disapproval. “That I can not do,” she declares firmly. “Did it not occur to you that the women here have their secrets to keep? Leave, or I shall call my men to throw you out.”
But Alfred notices the madame does not say that Frances doesn’t exist, and that right there makes him break out into a grin. “All right, I’ll go, but can I at least give you a message to give to her, if she returns?” He presses a small envelope into the madame’s gloved hands and thanks her before dashing off.
She never really leaves his mind, no matter what he is doing, and he keeps asking about her even after he is forced to leave town for another job. He knows that they will meet again in the future, which is why he buys a golden ring for that day and tucks it into the pocket of his vest, so that it will lie over his heart.
The other cowboys notice that he is a little quieter than before, though not by much. He is still earnest and hard-working, and he laughs and jokes as much as ever, but the dreamy look in his eyes shows the world that he is deeply in love. They shake their heads in sympathy sometimes, wondering why a good kid like him should fall for a soiled dove like her. But if anyone could make it work, why, it would be Alfred F. Jones.
The cattle drive ends a month later in southern Colorado, and the cowboys part ways in the town, most of them heading for the saloon, looking forward to cool beer and flirty dancers. Instead of joining them, Alfred drops off a letter to his folks back home in St. Louis and another one to his twin brother in college. He doesn’t tell them about the woman he has met, not yet, though he expects to someday. His parents would not approve, and Matthew would tell him he’s crazy, but they said the same things when he first told them he was going to Texas to work on the trails. He is certain they will come to love her as he does, and he thinks about it no more.
It is too late in the day to start his journey back to Arizona, and with no other choice left, Alfred pays for a room at the inn with his newly earned cash. Luckily, he doesn’t have to share his room with another guest, so he goes ahead and takes full advantage of the privacy. Stripping off his dusty work clothes and hanging his hat on the rickety chair, he blows out the candle and hops into the rather dingy bed. Alfred takes a few minutes to relax, bringing up the precious few memories he has of Frances, recalling her musky fragrance, the creamy luster of her skin, the glossy curl of her hair. Above all he remembers her beautiful half-smile, and her eyes, so dazzling blue and so, so sad. What he would do to make her happy and chase away whatever haunted her thoughts, he thinks, and in his dreams, Frances turns to him, and the fragile, yearning look on her face dashes his poor heart into pieces.
Tonight, she is not dressed like a whore, in corsets and satin and lace, she instead wears a white nightgown made of cotton too light and sheer to truly cover her nude body, and he can see the hints of her nipples through her dress, the shadow between her legs as she glides towards his bed. Just imagining her like that is enough to make him hard, although some of the details of her form look admittedly hazy in his inexperienced mind. His callused hands make a poor substitute for her soft and slender ones dancing over his skin, but he pretends that her tender mouth presses against his, while in reality, he takes his cock in hand and begins stroking firmly.
Now Alfred sees himself pressing her into the sheets, and she smiles up at him, guiding his hands over her lean body with her own, leading them down, down to where her long legs meet and God, she is so hot and wet and ready for him. Frances helps him press his fingers into her, teaches him how to touch the spots that make her gasp, and his mouth bone-dry, he watches in fascination as she moans his name and begs her pretty cowboy to fuck her. Faster and faster he pumps his throbbing cock, imagining himself kneeling between her spread legs, entering her, pushing into her surprisingly tight body. He whispers her name over and over, a mantra, a prayer, as he fucks her into the mattress, and she is writhing and keening and clutching at the headboard with one hand, her dress clinging close to her sweaty skin, her nipples outlined clearly through the material. Somehow Alfred is able to hold out for another few minutes as he furiously pumps away, and then finally he comes, white-hot semen splashing over his hand and stomach, even as he fills the panting Frances to the brim. He tries to keep her there with him for just a little longer, so they could embrace and kiss and do what lovers do, but already she is fading away like a ghost, and soon he is alone again.
Alfred slumps exhausted onto the soiled sheets, stretching out his cramped legs, blinking back the tears of frustration. He reaches groggily for a handkerchief and wipes the cum off of his skin with a disappointed sigh. God, he misses her, and dreams of making love to her don’t satisfy his need as much as just seeing her in truth would.
God, he misses her, and dreams of making love to her don’t satisfy his need as much as just seeing her in truth would. She could accept or reject his love, but he vows to not rest until he can find her and be with her one more time.
[Author's Notes: There was indeed a French madam named Blonde Marie who worked in Tombstone, Arizona. The Count, the man who oversaw the French madams, apparently existed as well.]
Author: etre_sans_age
Rating: NC-17
Characters: America/France
Warnings: sexual situations; "genderbend" AU
Wordcount: 3,712
Author's Notes: Reposted from the kink meme. For the prompt - In the time of the cowboys and the U.S. expansion West, French prostitutes were deported out of France and some moved the West to become a real hit with American cowboys, settlers, miners, etc. because there was so few women.
So France, a prostitute in the West, gets a "visit" from a cowboy America. No redeeming factor in this fic.
So much for writing the stuff I said I was going to write, I promise I have been working on them, I simply haven't come up with a good plot to tie things together yet. Not that this has a good plot either, I just have a thing for cowboys. Obviously.
The first thing he notices is her height. He isn’t short by any means, but she doesn’t need to crane her neck to look him in the eye, and that even without the added lift of her heeled boots. Maybe she is not exactly pretty - more striking, foreign, with heavy-lidded blue eyes and golden hair elaborately arranged with feathers and silk flowers, a strong profile marked by a long straight nose and angled jawline. She reminds him of a catamount, beautiful, unknowable, dangerous… And he is a fool for falling in love with a whore.
He feels out of place here, surrounded by wealthy gentleman and elegant courtesans, only a humble cowboy who managed to save up a bit of extra cash, but he sweeps off his hat as she approaches, sketching a quick bow.
“Bonsoir, monsieur Jones,” she murmurs huskily from behind a lace fan, curtsying slightly. “How may I be of service tonight?”
He grins at her and says, “Well, I ain’t no monsieur, miss. You can just call me Alfred or Al, I sure as heck won’t mind.”
She lowers the fan, and her smile is enigmatic. “Certainly, Al. My name is Frances, and I am honored to be your companion for the night.”
Holding out a gloved hand for him to take, she then steers him towards a private nook, where they may drink and converse before getting around to their intended transaction. The conversation usually only lasts a few minutes, Blonde Marie’s girls are ever in high demand, but time somehow slips away as the young man promptly regales her with his adventures on the cattle trails. It sounds like Alfred F. Jones has done just about everything there is to do in the wilds of the West, trying his hand at herding longhorns and taming broncos, traveling from the Texas hills to the Kansas plains, and what he has lived through would fill up more than one lifetime, and he is just eighteen years old. Frances knows only the brothel in Paris, the ship that brought her to America, the endless series of trains that abandoned her here in the parlor houses, but for him, she laughs and gasps and sighs and occasionally asks for the meaning of a word she does not know. Her smiles are almost not faked, and he feels like a king.
Or maybe it’s just the champagne talking, but he doesn’t give a damn about that, either.
They make it up to her room eventually, prompted by a meaningful glare from the madame. Alfred gallantly scoops her into his arms, grunting a little at her weight and the way her stiff petticoats fluff into his face. Frances plants a kiss on his cheek, causing him to blush and stumble, and they collapse onto the bed in a shower of laughter.
Alfred tells her she's beautiful and smothers her face with kisses because he just can’t get enough of how she smells and tastes and feels underneath him. He had been thinking of her since he first arrived into town and saw her tossing stale cake crumbs to the doves in the grey light of dawn, had loved her since then with all the wild heedless passion his heart possessed.
Her eyes glitter wickedly in the candlelight as she runs her hands down his sides, and that soft, sensual chuckle hums through his skin and bones like wildfire. Suddenly, Frances curls up and wrestles him onto his back with surprising strength, and though he blinks in confusion to see her smiling down at him, he thinks that he’s gonna like this. He’s never even met a French person before, at most a Creole or two from the bayous, but he is impressed, and interested. Real interested…
“Is this your first time here, Al?” Frances asks as she slips the headdress out of her hair, letting the wheat-blonde waves cascade over her white shoulders. She then peels her gloves off with slow deliberate movements while Alfred stares and stares and tries to make his mouth work again.
“Y-yeah,” he admits, trying to look nonchalant, but the weight of her body centered on his groin is making this difficult, and he barely hears her reassuring him that she is a professional over the sound of his thudding heart. Still a little giddy from the champagne, Alfred goes nearly cross-eyed watching her untie the black ribbon around his collar and then slide it free.
“Please, hold your hands up,” she whispers, dangling the ribbon in between her slender fingers.
“Huh? Err… Oh. Oh, right.”
He reluctantly moves his hands from where they are resting at her corseted waist, and gracefully, Frances binds his wrists to the iron railing of the bedstead, knotting the tie just loose enough to let the blood circulate. If Alfred hadn’t been blushing before, he sure is now, and he wonders if it’s not too late to say this is actually his first time with a woman, ever. But despite the nervous fluttering in his stomach, he is still grinning, bold as brass, and Frances smiles encouragingly at him in return.
With her knees on either side of his waist, she arches over him and brushes her lips against his, just the lightest hint of a kiss, and Alfred can’t help himself from straining at his bonds, needing to take her into his arms. Murmuring something in French, she places a hand on his chest to hold him down, causing him to pout a little as he falls back onto the pillows. Such adorable excitability from her handsome customer does not go unnoticed, and for the first time in a long time, Frances decides to indulge herself. To hell with Marie; for now, she will be his lover and no one else’s.
Even though he could probably break free of the tie at any time, Alfred is much too busy watching Frances as she kisses a line down his bared chest. He shudders each time her warm lips press against his skin, he groans aloud each time her teeth nip at his flesh, and when she finally reaches the trail of blond hair at the hem of his jeans, his cock is straining painfully hard against the denim.
She glances up and catches his wide-eyed gaze, then rubs the palm of her hand hard against his groin, and Alfred swears frantically under his breath because that felt too damn good to be real.
“Oh God, Frances,” he mumbles, bucking his hips instinctively.
Saying nothing in reply, Frances starts to unbuckle his belt and unfastening his jeans, sliding the material away just enough to free his erection from its confines. The cool air brushing against his cock makes Alfred hiss a little, and Frances’ next move makes him react even more violently.
“H-hey, what are you doing?!” he chokes out, and she blinks at him in faux innocence, fingers still wrapped around his length.
“What you are paying me to do, my darling.” He may be just a boy, but dear sweet Alfred is definitely a man where it counts most, Frances thinks, and she moves her hand admiringly up his erection, imagining how wonderful it would feel deep inside her.
Alfred tries to keep the embarrassing whiny noises from tumbling out of his mouth, but the way she is stroking and pumping away, her fingers squeezing a tight loop around his erection, it’s so much better than his own hand, and he is afraid he’s going to come right now. At last, Frances lets go, that gorgeous smile still lingering on her cherry red lips, and he doesn’t get to finish breathing a sigh of relief before she goes down on him in a creak of whalebone and rustle of petticoats. She plies her tongue against his straining cock, lapping up the precum dripping down the underside, and when she hums in enjoyment of this task, Alfred gasps and curses again as he yanks at the piece of cloth keeping his arms trussed up and away from her. He can’t even get out the words to beg for more, but he doesn’t need to, because Frances senses he is close, and she obliges him by wrapping her lips around the head of his cock and sucking as she takes more and more of him into her mouth. She moves her head back a little for every time she inches forward, hollowing her cheeks and pressing hard against the salty flesh with her tongue, and she looks up to see his flushed pretty face, his sky-blue eyes now squeezed shut, his mouth in the shape of an “oh” as he groans in pleasure.
Then Alfred comes, yelling Frances’ name hoarsely as he jerks and shudders and spills into her hot, welcoming throat, and she swallows around his cock as she drinks him down. He is panting so hard for breath when he collapses onto the mattress, his vision still full of stars, his bones turned into molasses.
“Well… fuck, that was… that was amazing, Frances,” he says breathlessly, laughing a little.
Frances does not answer, she instead finishes licking him clean, kisses his softening cock one last time and allows herself a few seconds to compose herself. Tucking her hair back behind her ear, she runs her tongue over her teeth and lips, and Alfred has to bite back another whimper at such a natural, sensual gesture.
“It was my pleasure, cher Alfred,” she finally murmurs, regarding him through long pale lashes, and just the way she says his name is like another orgasm in itself.
Though he struggles against sleep, Alfred can not keep his eyes from closing, his tense muscles relaxing, and the last thing he remembers is Frances untying his arms and rubbing the feeling back into his hands, and he drowsily wonders how she got to become a whore in the first place with such a flat chest.
He dreams of making love to her, straddled in his lap, moving deliciously slow upon his erection amidst the drifts of petticoats, uttering quiet breathy gasps as she lifts herself up and then pushes back down hard. Alfred is not quite so poised, and he squeezes her thin body close, growling as she clenches around him, savoring the strange and incredible feeling of being inside her like this. Thankfully, it isn’t long before her breaths become shallower and more erratic, movements growing increasingly unrestrained once she frees herself from the last bit of self-possession that had marked her actions this night. In the dim light, she shimmers like liquid gold, and he grazes his teeth against her exposed throat, feeling rather than hearing her husky, sultry moans as they move together, ever closer.
A beautiful thing when he rocks his hips, pushing deep into her one last time, crying out as he releases, when her eyes snap open upon reaching climax, and their breaths intermingle in each other’s desperate open-mouthed kisses as they float back down to reality.
Perhaps stupidly, he confesses that he loves her in the silence afterwards, but Frances simply smiles, her eyes crinkling at the corners in genuine happiness. She nods and says something in French that he hopes means “I love you, too,” but more likely means “You are an idiot.”
He’ll take either one.
The dream ends abruptly as Frances shakes him awake, hair flawlessly rearranged, face again powdered white, lips a stunning scarlet. She tells him he must leave now, she expects another whore and her patron will be wanting to use this room soon. His brain can barely function as he fumbles in his vest and hands her a small pouch full of gold dust, which she tucks away into her bodice with a whispered thanks. Unable to resist the temptation, Alfred leans forward to kiss her, and even though her eyes widen slightly, she lets him press his lips against her own soft mouth. Then she breaks the kiss and turns away abruptly, leaving him stumbling after her.
Downstairs in the main parlor, Frances concludes their business in a low, crisp tone, and though she invites him to come back anytime, her guarded expression does not show much hope of that occurring. Still in a daze, Alfred bids her farewell, and zombie-like, shuffles off to his own room at the inn across the street, to sleep the rest of the night hours alone.
He remembers when he wakes up late the next morning, as his belly growls loudly for sustenance and his groin feels like it’s been pounded into shreds by a hammer. It’s a good pain, he tells himself, because it means he is now a man, thanks to the attentions of the sweetest belle in the entire West.
The other cowboys from the cattle drive nod and wink at Alfred when they see him at breakfast, occasionally slapping him on the back and making him wince, which in turn makes them laugh. They rib him mercilessly about his good luck, to have the balls to get into Blonde Marie’s and leave with them as well, but for once he only grins and does not boast, out of a need to keep that night to himself.
“Hah, well, as long as you didn’t make the mistake of fallin’ in love with her,” one of them teases.
“Better to kick a rattlesnake than to love a whore,” another man quips, to the general agreement of the others. “At least the rattlesnake won’t rob ya blind!”
Still laughing amongst themselves, the cowboys leave him to his meal, but the sausage and cornbread sit in his stomach like a lump of rock. Alfred doesn’t disbelieve them, he hasn’t survived this long by being that stupid. Yet whenever he closes his eyes, he sees Frances with him, in a home they’ve made for themselves, happy and free and loved.
So what if it’s only a dream, why shouldn’t he try to make it come true?
The plan might have worked if Frances apparently existed. Alfred never sees her again after that night, and the only one who goes out to feed the doves at dawn is a stubbly-bearded man he thinks might be the cook. Not that he has been watching the parlor house that religiously, he just happens to ride by it after running early morning errands.
The cook waves to him once or twice during these encounters, and he waves back politely, but the man is not Frances.
Then it occurs to Alfred that he ought to ask the belles if they knew where their sister disappeared to. He catches two of them as they walk through town in their fashionable Parisian dresses and parasols, but they do not know a tall twenty-something prostitute with blond hair and blue eyes by the name of Frances. Je ne sais pas, they murmur, and giggling, the girls ask if he would like their company instead. Alfred makes a noncommittal answer, still hoping to reunite with Frances, but he escorts them back to the parlor house anyway.
Once they arrive, he slips away from the girls and into the main room, looking eagerly at the crowd of pretty faces. Not seeing Frances anywhere, Alfred bounds up the stairs to find the room she had taken him to, the one at the end of the hall, he recalls, but the lights are off and the door is locked. He asks a passing servant about the owner of the room, where she might be, but the girl shrugs.
“None of the ladies use that room, sir. It is reserved for the Count, and what company he keeps.”
Everything about this is making less and less sense, and he wonders if he had paid a month’s worth of salary for a fantasy. “The Count?” he repeats dumbly.
“Oui, the Count.” It is the madame herself, and Alfred is hard put to not shrink under the coldness of her glare. She says, “Sir, if you do not have the money to hire one of my girls tonight, then please remove yourself. You are disrupting my business with your foolishness.”
He frowns, but is not deterred from his mission. “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but I have to find Frances, and no one is telling me anything! Please, is there any way you can help me?”
Blonde Marie snaps her fan shut in disapproval. “That I can not do,” she declares firmly. “Did it not occur to you that the women here have their secrets to keep? Leave, or I shall call my men to throw you out.”
But Alfred notices the madame does not say that Frances doesn’t exist, and that right there makes him break out into a grin. “All right, I’ll go, but can I at least give you a message to give to her, if she returns?” He presses a small envelope into the madame’s gloved hands and thanks her before dashing off.
She never really leaves his mind, no matter what he is doing, and he keeps asking about her even after he is forced to leave town for another job. He knows that they will meet again in the future, which is why he buys a golden ring for that day and tucks it into the pocket of his vest, so that it will lie over his heart.
The other cowboys notice that he is a little quieter than before, though not by much. He is still earnest and hard-working, and he laughs and jokes as much as ever, but the dreamy look in his eyes shows the world that he is deeply in love. They shake their heads in sympathy sometimes, wondering why a good kid like him should fall for a soiled dove like her. But if anyone could make it work, why, it would be Alfred F. Jones.
The cattle drive ends a month later in southern Colorado, and the cowboys part ways in the town, most of them heading for the saloon, looking forward to cool beer and flirty dancers. Instead of joining them, Alfred drops off a letter to his folks back home in St. Louis and another one to his twin brother in college. He doesn’t tell them about the woman he has met, not yet, though he expects to someday. His parents would not approve, and Matthew would tell him he’s crazy, but they said the same things when he first told them he was going to Texas to work on the trails. He is certain they will come to love her as he does, and he thinks about it no more.
It is too late in the day to start his journey back to Arizona, and with no other choice left, Alfred pays for a room at the inn with his newly earned cash. Luckily, he doesn’t have to share his room with another guest, so he goes ahead and takes full advantage of the privacy. Stripping off his dusty work clothes and hanging his hat on the rickety chair, he blows out the candle and hops into the rather dingy bed. Alfred takes a few minutes to relax, bringing up the precious few memories he has of Frances, recalling her musky fragrance, the creamy luster of her skin, the glossy curl of her hair. Above all he remembers her beautiful half-smile, and her eyes, so dazzling blue and so, so sad. What he would do to make her happy and chase away whatever haunted her thoughts, he thinks, and in his dreams, Frances turns to him, and the fragile, yearning look on her face dashes his poor heart into pieces.
Tonight, she is not dressed like a whore, in corsets and satin and lace, she instead wears a white nightgown made of cotton too light and sheer to truly cover her nude body, and he can see the hints of her nipples through her dress, the shadow between her legs as she glides towards his bed. Just imagining her like that is enough to make him hard, although some of the details of her form look admittedly hazy in his inexperienced mind. His callused hands make a poor substitute for her soft and slender ones dancing over his skin, but he pretends that her tender mouth presses against his, while in reality, he takes his cock in hand and begins stroking firmly.
Now Alfred sees himself pressing her into the sheets, and she smiles up at him, guiding his hands over her lean body with her own, leading them down, down to where her long legs meet and God, she is so hot and wet and ready for him. Frances helps him press his fingers into her, teaches him how to touch the spots that make her gasp, and his mouth bone-dry, he watches in fascination as she moans his name and begs her pretty cowboy to fuck her. Faster and faster he pumps his throbbing cock, imagining himself kneeling between her spread legs, entering her, pushing into her surprisingly tight body. He whispers her name over and over, a mantra, a prayer, as he fucks her into the mattress, and she is writhing and keening and clutching at the headboard with one hand, her dress clinging close to her sweaty skin, her nipples outlined clearly through the material. Somehow Alfred is able to hold out for another few minutes as he furiously pumps away, and then finally he comes, white-hot semen splashing over his hand and stomach, even as he fills the panting Frances to the brim. He tries to keep her there with him for just a little longer, so they could embrace and kiss and do what lovers do, but already she is fading away like a ghost, and soon he is alone again.
Alfred slumps exhausted onto the soiled sheets, stretching out his cramped legs, blinking back the tears of frustration. He reaches groggily for a handkerchief and wipes the cum off of his skin with a disappointed sigh. God, he misses her, and dreams of making love to her don’t satisfy his need as much as just seeing her in truth would.
God, he misses her, and dreams of making love to her don’t satisfy his need as much as just seeing her in truth would. She could accept or reject his love, but he vows to not rest until he can find her and be with her one more time.
[Author's Notes: There was indeed a French madam named Blonde Marie who worked in Tombstone, Arizona. The Count, the man who oversaw the French madams, apparently existed as well.]