Replete, the Sulkie settled into her pillows and stretched her silky limbs out over the sheets in a deliberately provocative manner. Wyatt thought about taking advantage of the situation. It was always hard to resist her when she was in the mood, but he’d not given her a love philter in order to bed her. She’d been willing enough with a little magic and herbs, particularly in the beginning. He needed to talk to her and he needed her in a receptive mood. She was the most contrary creature he’d ever had to work with before.

“Maddie, I reckon we had an agreement. You’re making it very hard to keep to my end of the bargain.”

“Maybe I changed my mind, monkey man?”

Even drugged and amorous she wasn’t going to forget to call him a monkey apparently. She didn’t, when they first met, insult him quite so frequently.

“As you said you would if you were not to fall in love.”

“I’m in love right now,” Maddie purred and the sound literally rumbled warmly from her chest much as if she was a cat.

“Yes, and so we can talk and I can get some sense out of you. You’re making it harder and harder to keep you safe here.”

Pouting her lips into a moue shape Maddie wiggled in the bed, patted the sheets beside her and said: “why don’t you get a little closer. We could have some fun before we get down to boring business?”

“If my lovemaking didn’t win you over on its own merit I won’t be accepting a counterfeit.”

“Love potion?”

“Yup.”

“Sneaky monkey.”

“You told me you would be a handful if you didn’t fall in love with me, and you haven’t – and I haven’t with you, so there we are. How am I to keep you safe if you keep trying to escape?”

“Common sense tells me to stay here and fall in love with you. You’re handsome enough for a human, but the fact is my soul is pining for the water and my own true form. Without the sweet fruits of love I have no reason to stay in this dry town sucking dust into my lungs day after day.”

“You have reason, as your common sense has tried to tell you – otherwise you would not have struck your bargain with me. You paid me good coin once I won you in that hand of Catcan Stud.”

“Oh this is so boring, let’s fuck already!”

“Perhaps I’ll come back when the effects aren’t quite so strong. Naturally I didn’t tell the apothecary exactly what I wanted the philter for. He must have taken me at face value.”

“Don’t go, Wyatt.”

Now Maddie turned all kittenish. It was getting harder and harder to resist. Wyatt wondered why he was. It wasn’t like she wouldn’t bed him when she wasn’t under the influence. It might make a very pleasant change for her not to be snarling and biting and riding him like he was a wild bronco.

“Maddie, you gotta hear me. You will die if you go home, that’s if’n what you told me is true. If you want me to protect you got to stop trying to escape. I may have go out of town if I get a job, and I can’t be keeping you under lock and key the whole time.”

Maddie let out a wail that sounded very much like a Sulkie in the water and she flopped over onto her belly.

“You are cruel, Wyatt Earp. You remind me of my sorrow. I should die rather than to live this lie. Bring me someone I can love if it is not to be you so that at least my body will be happy in this terrible dry and waterless place!”

Perhaps she was right? Maybe he needed to find someone in town she could willingly attach herself too? Doc? The new apothecary?

He ended up staying after all, if just to comfort the beautiful creature in her hour of need.

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