He purchased miner's garb and a couple of picks and shovels from the mercantile for show, and camping supplies and foodstuffs. With his saddle horse, pack mule, and panniers secured in the livery barn, and a room rented at the Rutherford B. Hayes Hotel at the west edge of town, at the base of an anvil-shaped rimrock, he enjoyed a beer and a surprisingly good steak at a small brick-and-adobe tavern nestled in the cottonwoods along the Diamondback River. The place had been recommended by the livery owner.
Longarm had intended to call it an early day. He and the marshal's uncle would be heading out at first light. Besides, it had been a long train ride from Denver, and, having been otherwise occupied with Cynthia Larimer, he hadn't gotten much sleep the night before.
But before he knew it, he'd become involved shooting craps with a couple of good-humored placer miners, who told him this and that about the river and the canyon he was about to traverse. He didn't wander over to the Hayes until well after ten o'clock, with distant thunder and the smell of rain pushing in from the mountains.
He shucked out of his clothes and crawled into the soft, albeit lumpy bed, and blew out his lamp. He watched lightning flash in the window for about two minutes before the rumbling thunder and the fresh smell of the rain and sage lured him off to slumberland.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep before something woke him.
He opened his eyes and blinked into the darkness. Lightning lit up the two west-facing windows, for half a second filling the room with a cold, violet light.
Just enough light for just enough time for Longarm to see the hatted, jacket-clad figure moving toward him from the door. One flap of the jacket was pulled back behind a holstered revolver.
Chapter 5
Warning bells clanging in his head, Longarm flung his right hand out toward the double-action .44 holstered on the chair back beside the bed.
“Hold on!” a female voice hissed, so drowned by a sudden thunderclap that Longarm was slow to comprehend.
In an eyeblink, his pistol was in his hand, cocked, and aimed at the intruder's belly. The intruder aimed a silver-plated Colt at Longarm.
“It's Merle,” she said, keeping her voice low.
“Christalmighty!” Longarm groused, still too shocked to release his grip on his .44. “What the hell you think you're doin'?”
She stood about five feet from the bed. He could see only her silhouette during lightning flashes. Rain pelted the windows, and the wind was kicking up.
“You holster yours,” she said, voice like steel, “I'll holster mine.”
Longarm wasn't in the habit of dropping his own gun when another was being aimed at himâeven when that other gun was held by a blond heart-stopper like Merle Blassingame.
“You first,” Longarm countered.
“We'll do it together.”
“On the count of three.”
Merle said, “One, two, three . . .”
Neither gun moved a hair.
“Oh, for Pete's sake!” she said, giving her silver-plated Navy a twirl and dropping it into its holster. “I came to fuck, not swap lead.”
Longarm let his Colt sag. “Huh?”
She doffed her hat, slung it toward a chair in the far corner, then began unbuckling her cartridge belt. When she had the belt off and was slinging it over the same chair holding Longarm's belt and holster, he reached over toward the chair himself and, keeping his eyes on the girl, dropped his .44 in its sheath.
He watched, by intermittent lightning flashes, thunder rumbling and rattling the windows, as Merle unbuttoned her shirt quickly, shrugged out of the loose-woven garment and her deerskin jacket, and tossed both in the general direction of her hat.
“Mind if I light a lamp? I like to see what I'm gettin' into.”
Longarm swallowed. “Right practical.”
When she'd lit the lamp on the dresser, she kicked out of her boots and did a cobra imitation, wiggling out of her jeans and men's skintight longhandles, then hopping around, full breasts jouncing beneath a lacy chemise, as she pulled off her men's white socks.
Finally, naked from the waist down, she stepped up to the bed, regarded Longarm wistfully from between the mussed wings of her long, blond hair, which the wan lamplight caressed lovingly.
She crossed her arms and lifted the sheer chamise toward her neck. The material raked over her breasts, catching on the nipples, jostling them slightly before she pulled the garment up over her head. Her hair rose with the chamise and fell back down across her shoulders, sticking out here and there like straw from a shock, several strands framing the big, round, pink-nippled globes of her breasts.
Assuming a mock bullfighter's stance, she held the chamise out between the thumb and index finger of her left hand, as though it were a cape, then dropped it straight down to the floor. She tossed her hair out, giving Longarm an uncluttered view of her body.
Her belly was flat, the hips nicely rounded, and the thighs arcing in a long, graceful curveâthe hard, toned thighs of a woman who spent a lot of time on horseback.
“You like?” she said.
Longarm swallowed. His heart was thudding like a Ute war drum. He always slept in his birthday suit, and his shaft was tenting the single blanket he'd drawn up to his waist.
She reached downâ“Christ, is that another .44 under there?”âand wrapped her hand around his cock as though around the neck of a chicken she were about to strangle for supper.
Longarm's stomach lurched as though he'd been shot out of a cannon.
He grabbed her wrist, pulled her down to him, and kissed her. She sagged against him and opened her lips, ramming her tongue into his mouth and squirming against him, her feet still on the floor.
Kissing her, he wrapped his left arm around her shoulders and, sliding to one side, began pulling her onto the bed.
She pulled her tongue back into her mouth and smiled while pressing her lips to his. “I wanna be on top.”
“Why doesn't that surprise me?”
Longarm squeezed her arm, pulling her close while he kissed her, enjoying her warm, full lips against his. Then he lay back and threw aside the covers, exposing his fully erect, throbbing shaft which a sudden lightning flash illuminated dramatically.
She groaned like a bitch in heat and straddled him, thunder clapping and making the entire building shudder, while the wind blasted the walls and windows with heavy rain.
She kissed him and ran her hands down his arms and across the hard bulging slabs of his chest. Suddenly she looked down at him, her eyes meeting his. “I don't visit the room of every handsome stranger who rides into town, I want you to know.”
He pinched her nipples between his thumbs and index fingers, his thick mustache turning up with a grin. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“I reckon you saved my life. I was outgunned.”
“I have a feelin' you'd have figured a way to save your bacon.”
“Doubt it. Some of Falcon's boys were gunslicks from Texsas and Oklahoma. His daddy, ole Amos Falcon himself, hired 'em to keep squatters off his spread.” She scooted down his thighs then leaned forward until her hair was dropping down over Longarm's groin, making his whole being tingle.
“No sir,” she cooed as the lightning flashed and the thunder clapped, the guttering lamplight sliding shadows to and fro, “I'd be pushing up daisies now if it hadn't been for you, Longarm.” She took his shaft in one hand, wrapping her fingers around it, and kissed the head.
“Oh well . . . I reckon there's no point in arguin'.” He groaned as she suddenly slid her lips quickly down the length of his shaft, until his head met the back of her opening and closing throat.
He bunched the sheets in his hands and curled his toes as she whipped her lips back up the length of his iron-hard cock, over the circumcised head and off with a slight popping sound.
She scooted back up his thighs, until her hip bones lay over his. She pushed up on her knees and guided the head of his shaft into her furred slot, then slowly slid down upon him, the shaft rising into the hot, wet core of her.
Her voice was graveled and breathy. “Thank you, Custis.” She rose up and down, shuddering as if chilled to the bone, her hair tumbling around her shoulders. “It's all right if I call you Custis, isn't it?”
“Ma'am,” Longarm grunted as she began rising and falling faster, his fingertips digging into her waist just above her hipbones, “you can call me anything you want.”
“Merle.”
“Huh?” She was fairly bouncing atop him now, the bed springs squawking, the headboard tapping the wall.
“Call me Merle.”
She stopped suddenly and looked down at him seriously again, her round, sweat-slick breasts flattened on his chest.
She lowered her lips to his, chewed his lower lip for a second, then lifted her head again and ran her hand brusquely through his hair. “But only here. Out there, I'm Marshal Blassingame to you, chump, and everyone else.”
“Why not, since you ask so nice?” Longarm winced, his shaft standing tall inside her, waiting, his heart threatening to blow blood out his ears. “Now, you mind if we save the rest of the chitchat for later?”
She began thrusting her hips again, rising up and down on her haunches. It wasn't long before the bed was complaining like a sawyer's two-man timber saw and Merle was groaning and sighing and Longarm was grunting and gritting his teeth as the storm blasted away outside like a night skirmish during the Little Misunderstanding Between the States.
Longarm held himself back for as long as he could, grinding his teeth and digging his fingers into her hips. Finally, he threw his head back, arched his back, and let go.
“Gawd!” the marshal cried, grinding down hard and throwing her own head back on her shoulders, stretching her lips back from her teeth and hissing like a wildcat.
It took about five minutes for them both to catch their breath.
“Christ,” Merle said, looking at him from the bed's second pillow, her hair half-covering her face in the lightning flashes. She was shaking her head from side to side.
Longarm chuckled. “I gotta say, Merle,” he said, reaching over and squeezing her sweat-damp thigh, “it's been a while since I've been put up that wet my ownself.”
It was a lie. Cynthia Larimer had pleased him like few other women could, but there was something about having a big, athletic fillie like Merle Blassingame hauling your ashes, with her two good handfuls of bobbing tits assaulting your face while she did it.
That and the fact she'd obviously been so starved for it.
She kept her voice low. “I hope no one heard. I reckon it's not professionalâthe town marshal fuckin' a federal lawman here on official business.”
“Life's too short not to throw out the book a time or two.”
Longarm crawled out of bed and grabbed one of his cheroots off the dresser. Standing naked before the dresser, facing the bed, letting the cool, fresh air dry the sweat from his skin, he snapped a lucifer to life and touched the flame to the cigar's tip, puffing smoke.
Rain tapped against the windows, weaker than before.
“How in the hell did you get in here, anyway? I know I locked the door. As many times as bad folks have tried perforatin' my hide to avenge themselves or family members, it's become an obsession with me.” He blew out the match and tossed it into an ashtray atop the dresser.
“I live just down the hall,” Merle said, propping her head on one elbow and regarding him in the sliding shadows. “And old Grassley saw fit to provide me with a skeleton key.” She patted the bed. “Come back, Custis.” She gave a catlike groan. “I wanna do it some more.”
“Already?”
“I ain't had it in a long time.”
“What about Falcon?”
“That don't count. I was drunk.”
“I should get some sleep. I gotta long ride ahead of me.”
Even in the near darkness he could see her pooch her lips out. “Pleeeeeease?”
Longarm padded back to the bed. He sat on the edge and stared down at her rounded hips, the hard thighs curled together as she reclined on her right side, head propped on an elbow. He sighed.
She was just too good to pass up. Besides, he had no idea how long it would be before he'd have it again, heading into the tall and uncut like he was.
The heavy globes of her breasts were mashed together as they slanted toward the rumpled sheets. Her skin glistened faintly in the wan lamplight and the purple glow slanting through the window, between the lightning strikes that seemed to be dwindling as the storm moved on.
She reached up, plucked the cigar from between his fingers, leaned back, and took a deep drag. Her breasts flattened slightly against her chest, shaded nipples pointing toward the ceiling. As she exhaled the smoke straight up, Longarm took the cigar back and set it on the washstand beside the bed, with the coal hanging over the edge; then he leaned down and nuzzled her breasts.
“Duty calls, I reckon.”
She chuckled, rolling onto her back and spreading her knees, and ran her hands threw his hair. “Jesus, you fuck good, Custis!”
Â
At the same time, in the dark, wet alley behind the hotel, two men were hunkered down on their knees beside the privy, staring up at the single lighted window on the hotel's second story.
It was the room from which they'd been hearing the muffled sounds of rapturous lovemaking and in which they'd been watching the girl's long-haired silhouette bouncing up and down in the window. The tall gent had gotten out of bed for something and returned, and the sounds of lovemaking had resumed, but this time there wasn't anything to see as the man was on top and they were both below the window line.