The Pleasure Girl

Jan Springer

Logan Leigh sat on his midnight-black stallion and gazed down into the early morning frost-covered valley below. A lone spiral of gray smoke drifted from one of the several rock chimneys of an old white clapboard, two-story farmhouse, and to his surprise, an unusual warmth sifted through him. Coming to this place felt like he was coming home. Weird that he would think that way of this valley nestled in the Rocky Mountain foothills of Alberta, Canada, a place he’d never seen before, but that’s what he felt.

The warmth of the sight urged him to hurry up and ride down there, but he knew the dangers for a man on the run. He needed to keep an eye on the place and make sure there were no surprises when he rode in. Aside from laundry fluttering in the cold breeze on the line, there appeared to be no sign of movement. Past experience, however, cautioned him that looks could be deceiving.

Members of the gang he rode with had told him a pleasure girl lived alone down there, and despite the insistent hardening of his cock at finally having some female companionship, he knew he’d have to force himself to sit up here a while longer until he was sure they wouldn’t be interrupted by a posse.

Then he’d ride in.

****

It was getting dark fast, and she needed to get cleaned up at the water pump and grab her laundry off the line before it got too creepy out here, Teyla Sutton thought as she struggled to close the damaged greenhouse door. The darned hinges had been ripped off several weeks ago during a violent wind storm, and the plate glass door was so heavy she could barely move it, but she knew getting the door into the proper position would keep the heat from escaping the building, and so she struggled with it until it gave a good closed fit.

Wiping a bead of perspiration off her forehead, she wrapped her thick wool cardigan tighter around her and headed into the chilly wind toward the water pump in the middle of her farmyard. She’d been working inside her greenhouse for most of the day, planting a new crop of carrots and Boston lettuce, weeding and watering the rest of the plants, and enjoying the moist warmth, compliments of the southern exposure of the building as well as the solar heating.

But out here in the gloomy evening, it was a different story. Since the Catastrophe over four years ago, the weather had turned cold. Sure, the sun continued to shine during the day, but it just wasn’t warm enough to grow most crops or any flowers anymore.

Since the weather had turned bad, she’d had to make do without pretty much everything. Food at the store in town was priced out of her reach, so she’d turned to growing her own food in the greenhouse. She fished or hunted her meat and got her water supply from the well. For her, there was nothing but healthy organic living these days, and she was lean, thin, and healthy because of it.

But boy, she could kill for a large double-double coffee and a plate full of apple fritter doughnuts about now. As if her tummy knew exactly what she was thinking, it growled in protest, the spooky sound sending another volley of shivers up her spine, making her think of a growling grizzly bear ready to pounce on her from behind the nearby pine trees, encouraging her to pick up her pace.