you're too young & eager to love

My contacts are bugging me.

That somehow excuses me from having to write any introduction/explanation for these bits.

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Jacob comes into the saloon with cash in his pockets, and the girls bound on his heels like lost dogs. Clementine can see their tails wagging like flags in the night, their noses lifted to sniff his hands. But he’s tall as a tree and handsome and, more importantly, they’re family so she’ll smile from across the faro tables. It won’t mean much, though, and she doesn’t actually wonder about him until he approaches. Slow, steady, a familiar dark glint in his eye.

Clementine places a red curl behind her ear, kisses his cheek, and thinks she can smell rum on his breath. Not an uncommon trait around here, especially given the late hour.

“’ere was a snake in my room today.” She tells him as they climb the stairs, the sounds of rutting louder on the second floor. “I think Samuel would have a bunch to say ‘bout that.”

Jacob grunts, kicking her door in grandiosely and with no obvious respect for anything that isn’t his. “Samuel doesn’t have shit to say about anything.”

Clementine thinks this means his cough has gotten worse, but she keeps quiet, keeps her iron in her spine.

Jacob has slithering eyes and sly, white teeth. He looks at her, sometimes, as though he’s curious. And she doesn’t understand that one bit, seeing as he’s known every part of her. She gets it in her mind to take him to the butcher, bleed him out and bone him, but then she’d be stuck taking care of Samuel. (She doesn’t have the heart or the energy or the patience.)

When he drives into her, Clementine remains silent. She is wary of the creaking bedsprings, the creaking floorboards, their own creaking bones.