Gravel crunches as I park my car in the lot, only steps away from the cowboy village. My phone dings as I stop the car. Message from Jennifer. Damn it! Her baby is throwing up again and she isn’t coming. She’s already sent the sitter home and now I’m in the ridiculous tourist trap by myself. I slump in my seat.

My mom always told me that you could expect inspiration in the most unlikely places. Even though this was Jenn’s idea, even though I have thirty-seven papers at home waiting for me to grade, even though I’m more turned on by business suits than cowboy boots, here I am. I’m doing the fucking tour. Next weekend I’ll have the kids again so today is the day to have some entertainment.

Walking onto the main road of the ‘town’ was like walking onto the set of a western movie. I expect Jimmy Stewart to pop out of one of the little windows.

The wide, dusty, unpaved road separates the two rows of buildings. If you don’t focus too much on the skyscrapers and sports stadium on the horizon, the realism of the town was pretty good. The buildings looked like they had been pieced together with whatever supplies the workers had available, maybe even before the national railroad had been built. There was a post office, sheriff’s building, a haberdashery, ladies’ clothes shop, general store, and, of course, a saloon. It’s a hot day and a little dust devil starts swirling in front of me. Once it settles back to the ground, I see there is a man looking at me from the far end of the road. He looks like an actual cowboy. Not a movie cowboy but an unshaven, dusty ranch hand.

I look back at him but he barely blinks. I start walking towards him through the dust and the heat. He is just standing there. I don’t think he’s going to draw a gun or anything. I fucking hope not. This is all a tourist thing, right? Nah, I don’t even think he has a holster. I keep walking.

I walk past the post office and saloon. He’s just standing there. Maybe it’s a statue? That would make sense. A statue that people can use for social media posts. Draw, Pardner!

The chaps and the tip of his Stetson are vibrating in the wind so maybe it’s not a statue. He’s still looking at me. I keep walking. I think he’s smiling. It’s a real person, for sure. Finally, he starts walking towards me. He puts out his hand and I shake it. He’s smiling, which is a good sign, I guess.

“Howdy, ma’am. How are you this fine day?” He’s good looking, I can tell now. Strong cheekbones, a grizzled five-day beard growth and pretty eyes.

“I’m fine, thanks. Where is everyone?” I ask, brushing dust from my hair.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry to tell you, but we’re closed today.” He smiles apologetically.

“What?”

This is too fucking much. First Jenn bails on me and now the damn town is closed. I needed the distraction today, of all fucking days. I can’t help it, I start to cry.

The big cowboy places his big hands onto my shoulders and pulls me toward him. A bit assumptive, but it’s nice, actually. I fold into his chest and let it all out.

“I’m sorry, you’ll be okay,” he says soothingly.

After a few good sobs, I pull myself together and extract my upper body.

“Why is it closed?” I finally manage to ask.

“Yeah, there was a bomb threat so they had to send everyone home. The cops have been here and it turned out to be a false alarm. Some political thing.”

“Oh, that’s scary!”

“Yeah, it was. They refunded everybody’s money. I’m just here to get a few things ready for the tricks tomorrow.”

“Tricks?”

“Yeah, we have some riding tricks that the actors do on horses down the main drag. We’ll need some safety equipment put together but I just finished it. Do you want a drink?” He pointed to the saloon.

“I thought everything was closed?”

“That’s true, unless you got all the keys!” He held up a big ring of keys and jangled it.

I followed him back onto the road and towards the saloon.

“You know, I could really use cosmopolitan.” I take a breath.

“We got beer and we got whiskey,” he smiled.

“Coke? Orange juice?”

“We got beer and we got whiskey.”

“Whiskey sounds wonderful,”

“You gotta name, little lassie?”

“I’m Zoe. How about you?”

“Do you want my real name or my cowboy name?”

“Cowboy name!” I said, throwing my hand in the air.

“Blaze.”

I tried to choke down a laugh, unsuccessfully.

“It’s okay, you can laugh. I didn’t pick it.”

“So, do your pants have velcro on the sides, Blaze?” I grin.

“No, it’s not that kind of show, Zoe. Do you want to know my real name?” The way his body is shaped, he could easily be a stripper or model. His arms are bulky and cut and his blue eyes and long lashes are hypnotic.

“I most certainly do not. You are Blaze to me now and Blaze you shall always be.”

“Oh Jesus Christ.”

“That’s right.”

We enter the swinging doors of the saloon and I sit at the bar while Blaze walks behind it and starts rattling glasses.

“Whiskey works. Beer makes me bloat.”

Blaze looks at me.

“Which parts bloat?”

“My stomach. It’s not a great look, hun.”

“Whiskey it is!” He puts the glass in front of me. Just brown liquid in a glass, no ice, no mixer. I put it to my lips and dip my tongue, pulling my head back.

Blaze drinks the contents of his glass in two gulps and gives me a big shit-eating grin.

“Where do you live, Blaze? Are there apartments here?”

“No, nobody lives here. It isn’t zoned for residential. But I live about ten minutes walk from here, right over there.” He pointed.

“I’m from the city, I teach junior high.”

“Ah, forming the minds of the next generation. Respect.” Blaze tips his hat. I get a little zing to my nipples when he does this. It disorients me briefly.

“I do like working here. There isn’t much need for actors here in Ohio. Most of the work is in places like Los Angeles and New York and I just don’t want to live in those places.”

“Have you been there?”

“Yeah, I lived in both places trying to get work. They’re for crazy people. The traffic, the rudeness, I’d just rather be here in the Midwest.”

“I like it here too. You never know when you might just be walking down a dusty road and you meet some sexy cowboy named Blaze!”

“My real name is…”

“I don’t want to hear it, you just close your mouth,” and then I push my lips onto his and grab both of his shoulders. Blaze leans into the kiss and opens his mouth for my tongue.

I feel the need to get a quick breath and we pop out of our romantic bubble momentarily and laugh.

“That, um, happened fast!” Blaze intones.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, I’ve had a bad day...” I start.

“Do not be sorry, Zoe. That was hot.”

Immediately we are back at it, my mouth is on fire and our hands are on each other’s shoulders as if trying to remove all atmosphere between us, pressing our faces together.

“Miss Kitty’s rooms are upstairs,” Blaze says helpfully.

I smile broadly.

“Maybe you should call me Miss Kitty, Blaze?”

“And Miss Kitty you shall always be.”

Blaze lifts me off my chair and escorts me to the stairs. Even the inside of the saloon feels authentic. The wooden railings and steps seem quite safe; you obviously don’t want tourists tumbling down towards lawsuits.

He lets me pick the bedroom. I choose the one with the pink and purple scarfs pinned to the ceiling and the four-poster canopy bed.

“Good choice.”

He sits me in the red Victorian chair and stands in front of me.

“So you do stripteases?”

“Not for a living, no. This is just for you.”

Blaze removes his denim vest and places it gently on a chair. Then he works on the buttons on his sleeves and finally the buttons down the front of his shirt.

“Am I just supposed to sit here?”

“Yes. Sit.”

He takes off his shirt, folds it and puts it on the chair. His chest is sculpted and hairy. His nipples are as hard as my own. He moves towards me and lifts me up again, placing me seated on the edge of the bed. He goes to the bathroom and runs a bit of water. Are we taking a bath? I don’t remember seeing a bathtub in the room. He comes back with a tub of water. Cowboy towns are nice but cowboy towns with indoor plumbing are even nicer.

“May I wash your feet?”

I shudder.

“What do you mean? Do they stink?”

“No, they’re fine. This is something that people did back in the 1800s before getting intimate. It can be kinda fun.”

“You mean something that women did for men back in the 1800s.”

“Yeah, probably. But things are different now. Too weird for you, Zoe?”

“No, I didn’t mean that. Sure, let’s try it. Do you have a foot fetish?”

“No, I don’t have a foot fetish. But I like this little ritual.”

He takes my left foot and puts it into the warm water. He has a small soft brush like a toothbrush that he used on the top of my foot and it’s gentle and feels really wonderful, like scratching an itch, even though I hadn’t noticed any itch before. With one hand he is brushing the top of my foot, while the other is cradling my heel. The brush goes between each toe and I giggle a little at the tickle.

I lay back further against the chair. With all these sensations happening to my feet, it’s hard to think of anything else. Maybe this is what meditation is like. When there’s one thing that is taking up all the space in your mind you can’t be stressed because your attention is all on one thing!

“Is it nice?”

“Oh, it’s really nice, Blaze.”

He dries my left and dunks my right foot. Once he’s done, I stretch my brand new feet and crinkle my toes.

“That felt great!” I exclaim.

“Good, now we move on to business.”

Blaze lays me on my back on the bed with legs still dangling on the side. He gets on top of me, face to face, and links both thumbs under the sides of my panties and pulls them down my legs. I comply by straightening my legs into the air.

Shirtless Blaze then drops to his knees and faces my right thigh. He is nowhere near my pussy, closer to my knee. He pulls the skin of my inner thigh into my mouth and strokes it with his tongue. I don’t think a guy has ever done that to me before. It is erotic, surprisingly so. He works his way towards my clit and then skips over it and proceeds to the other thigh.

“Hey, you missed something,” I joke.

“You are only to utter six words, Zoe. Harder, softer, faster, slower, yes and monkeybutter.”

“Monkeybutter?” I laugh.

“Yeah, that’s the safe word. You say ‘monkeybutter’ and I stop what I’m doing because I’m hurting you or it’s unpleasant or you’re just not in the mood. Sound okay?”

“Sounds great. Faster!” I direct.

“Got it.”

Blaze continues to move his mouth a little more quickly along my thighs but still didn’t come close to my clit.

“Faster! Faster!” I say and point to my clit, lifting up the skin around it.

Blaze just smiles and kept licking and sucking on my thighs. It feels great but my cunt is getting very impatient.

I try to be stoic as he continues to work on my thighs and, now, stomach. The cowboy who couldn’t shoot straight, that’s who this guy was. He couldn’t find a clit if it was painted red and had shiny metallic wheels.

I can feel the sex welling up in me but was getting no relief from this fucking guy. I can just play with myself in the car when this disaster is finished. Finally, finally, his forearm brushes against my clit and I almost leap out of the bed.

“Oops!” Blaze says.

Oops! Fucking oops! That’s where you’re supposed to be, dickhead! I don’t say it out loud but I think it.

He continues to wander around all of my decidedly non-dirty parts cluelessly. I am getting really turned on, yes, but I’d like to get to the good part someday, y’know?

Blaze isn’t reading my intention because of the fucking six-word rule. I don’t want him to stop so I’m not saying ‘monkeybutter.’ I sure as hell didn’t want him to go any ‘slower.’ I want ‘faster’ but he thinks that that means move around my thighs faster and that isn’t what I mean. If he stops now, I’ll have to murder him.

Blaze was now, finally, moving towards my goddamn twat. His chaotic tongue is licking both sides of my labia once and then again. I can feel my pulse in my crotch. Bu-bump. Bu-bump. Ba-bump. Blaze is looking at me for the first time since he started down there. He stares at me and he flicks his tongue out of his mouth right directly onto my clit like a snake. I scream bloody murder.

Blaze laughs, pushes his face into the sheets and laughs again. Now he’s back between my legs, looking up at me. Is he going to flick again? Why is he waiting so long? But he doesn’t flick. I don’t know whether I’m relieved or pissed. Instead, he locks down his mouth with suction right onto my clit. He knew where it was the whole fucking time! I can feel the suction but I can’t feel his tongue on me. Whoosh. His tongue passes by my clit inside his mouth but doesn’t touch it, like a bat flying by you at night. Whoosh again. Again, but this time it brushes against it. It feels like fire, it’s burning me. No, it’s lighting me. I’m a match.

Blaze is sucking and licking now, really slowly. I could actually ask him to go faster, that’s within the rules. But I don’t. Let him go slow. Let’s stay here for a while. Maybe all this lead-up isn’t so bad after all...

In my twenty-six years, I have had a man go down on me maybe five times. And not once did he spend longer than a minute on it. Like sixty seconds. And here was Blaze, we were, what, twenty minutes into it and he had barely even touch my clit yet! I think I’m intellectual enough that I can hold two conflicting ideas in my head and still function. Right now, I wanted Blaze to get his fucking tongue on my fucking clit and go to town until I couldn’t fucking see straight. But I ALSO want him to take his fucking time and turn the fucking intensity up as high as I can take it. I can want both things, right? So I don’t say anything. None of the six words came out of my mouth, just unintelligible moans.

Blaze has his tongue directly on my clit, at first just resting there. Now he is pulling on it, vibrating it, making all kinds of side-swipes and curly-cues. A wave of dark pleasure is rising inside it like boiling water in a kettle. I can feel the pressure against my skin. It’s pushing against my crotch and winds down my legs, tingling and twitching. Up my stomach and straight for my nipples, into my armpits and up my neck. My whole scalp feels like it’s bubbling. The urge is everywhere in my body like a virus. Blaze keeps working on my clit, taking little side trips to my thighs and stomach whenever he can see that my intensity reaches a fever pitch.

He moves away from my crotch to my thigh again and wipes his chin. He gives me an impish smile and dives back into my cunt. He’s on me again like a pneumatic chain. I can feel my emotions and energy rise up through my body and past my head, right out into the air around us in the little Western bedroom. Blaze is watching my face closely. I know I’m sweating and my makeup is running. I just don’t care. I think I’m on my way. I can feel a kind of throbbing in my nether regions that usually tells me I’m almost there. Blaze doesn’t move away this time, he keeps going. And going. I’ll be there in a few seconds if he just…

The bubble bursts over me like a hot water balloon. I can feel the sparkles traveling up and down my body, moving like bursts of light in an electrical storm. Blaze is just watching me like a documentary, a stupid smile pasted on his rugged face.

But he isn’t done. He’s back between my legs even though I’m barely coming down from the frenzy. He starts nibbling my thigh again and then moves back to my clit, no prelude this time.

Without even getting back to room temperature, I can feel myself climbing the pleasure ladder again, rung by rung. Blaze is ramping up his tongue activity until my hips become a catapult, coiled and ready to launch him across the room. He holds onto my calves to anchor himself as I rock and thrust.

And then I’m lost again in another burst of colored light as Blaze moves his tongue across my whole vagina expertly, finding the bits of desire in the folds and making them pop, one after another. Each time, my body quivers on the bed.

Blaze continues to ravage my pussy, his face buried deep in my womanhood. I’m convulsing as we race towards another climax. Then my second moment arrives and it dwarfs the first, coming harder; all heat and light.

And now I’m limp, unable to move my arms and legs briefly. Blaze extracts himself from my legs, kissing my body inch by inch as he does.

“Now we need to take care of you,” I mumble as I lean clumsily towards him on the bed. He’s sitting up.

“Are you in a position to do that?” he smiled, wiping his mouth before he kisses me.

“I’m...I’m...can we just lay here for a bit?” I finally said.

“We can. Zoe, let me tell you something. What we just did is the greatest possible sexual experience for me. We don’t need to do anything else. And you,” he picked up one of my arms and let it drop lifeless back to the mattress, “need to rest.”

“Really?” I sat up.

“Really. I’m good. The last hour with you was the sexiest thing I can imagine.”

“How’s that? I’ve never met a guy who thought that.”

“Well, I don’t know why I’m different from some other men. But, to me, it makes a lot of sense. I can make myself cum. I can jack off. I can do that anytime. It isn’t as nice as having intercourse with a woman, but it’s fine. But what can’t I do by myself? I can’t please a woman. So I do it with you.”

“Well, I’m very grateful for that, Blaze.”

“So you don’t want to know my real name, Zoe?”

“Sure. Tell me.”

“It’s Rupert.”

“Fuck that, I’m still calling you Blaze.”