by Tabor Evans
Ki began to run his tongue around and around the dark aureoles of her breasts. Perspiration, wrung out of her by her passion, beaded in her cleavage. His tongue lapped up the salty taste. Her nipples became hard nuggets of flesh. He chewed them ever so gently, while his hands supported and massaged her twitching bottom.
She began to wail, softly and faintly. Her legs, scissored around his waist, clamped together like a vise.
Ki only laughed. "Woman, I have hardly begun with you. Go ahead and take your pleasure. It is only the first of so much more to savor."
Celine delighted in the challenge. "I bet I can make you come too," she cooed into his ear. "Like this, and this!" Her silky furnace gripped and stroked the length of him, embedded inside of her. "You'd just better come, or else!" She tilted her pelvis so that her backside stuck up and out, in that way pulling herself back so that now only the tip of him was still in her. "Are you going to come, or are you going to be left out in the cold!" she crowed in triumph, her tongue teasingly licking his face.
Ki grinned, his dark eyes locking with her lavender gaze. "Before my worthy adversary declares her total victory and issues her ultimatum, she had best look to her rear…
In order for Celine to pull her hips away from him. she'd had to jut out the twin globes of her bottom. Her buttocks were now splayed wide apart, her anus totally defenseless and vulnerable, as Ki's fingers tickled the length of her backside's cleft.
"Ooh!" she squeaked, involuntarily pressing closer to him. taking in fully half of his member. "Oh! Ooooh!" Her ass danced and bobbed as he lightly pressed against her opening. "You wouldn't dare," she whimpered, coaxed by Ki's prodding finger into the preliminary throes of her orgasm. "You wouldn't dare!" But the tone of her voice, and the sparkle in her violet eyes, told him that he certainly should dare!
Ki brought his finger up to wet and lubricate it in the pool of sweat that had collected in the small of her back. Then, as she began the long slide toward her climax, he slid his finger deep into her anus.
Celine threw back her head and sang like a bird. She came like a summer's cloudburst, her bottom sizzling against Ki's hands as tremors ran through her limp body.
Ki, still as hard as a stick of marble, carried her over to the bed and laid her down upon it. He began again, running his fingers through her silky, honey-colored tresses as he kissed the flush of sexual abandon that had spread across her nose and cheeks. His mouth tirelessly worked its way down her neck, breasts, and belly until he was by her side, on his hands and knees, and then he lowered his head between her spread legs, to nip and lick the tender flesh of her inner thighs.
Celine was so paralyzed with pleasure, with delicious sensation, that she could do nothing but stroke and palm his erection, delighting at the way his hardness cavorted beneath her touch.
"My pet…" she giggled, giving his tip a squeeze. Her nails tickled and scratched at his groin, forcing a long, low moan from Ki as he darted his tongue between her parted, glistening inner folds.
"Ohhh!" Her cry became an unintelligible garble of noise as Ki's tongue flicked and flicked and flicked like some tiny whip of love against her very core. Her hands became claws pulling him away, and then around to enter her. As he buried himself in her steaming body, she bent her legs to press her calves against the backs of his knees, pinning him down.
Ki worked his hips like a steam locomotive's pistons. He felt his climax rising up from the soles of his feet, coursing through his loins to spin like a deep whirlpool in his groin. He began to shudder as the silvery hot ball inside of him sent drips along his spine.
Celine felt him grow and swell until she thought he might burst. She was tottering on the edge of yet another cascading climax, but before she lost the power of speech, she languidly slid her hand down Ki's broad, muscular back, to press a finger meaningfully against the swell that marked the start of the cleft of his rear end.
"Ahhh," she said between kisses. "I've got you right where I want!"
Fully delighted to play out this most wonderful game, Ki pretended to plead, "Oh, don't!" He angled up his groin in order to rub his tip against the most sensitive area of her sex. He sawed back and forth, delaying his orgasm for just one more moment, as Celine writhed below him.
Suddenly she slid the sweat-slick tip of her index finger into his anus, and gave a little push, the movement propelling his hips, now turned to hot jelly, forward so that as he came he was locked within her to the hilt. Their voices blended into a chorus of love-sounds as their bodies bucked together mindlessly, their climaxes slowly fading, to leave them breathless and faint.
As they cuddled together, Celine drawled, "Well, I never…"
Ki waited a moment, and then said, "You never what?" But still there was no answer. He glanced at her face. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing had become regular. A moment later her lips parted, and she began to snore.
Laughing, Ki untangled himself from her grip, and quietly went to the washstand to bathe. He dressed silently, but he must have made some noise, for Celine suddenly awoke.
'Where you goin'?" she mumbled sleepily. "Stay…"
"I have duty I must attend to, sweet woman," he whispered.
"Maybe I could help you," she pouted. "I want to help you a lot," she added dreamily.
"You may help me by remaining very quiet," Ki instructed.
"Wel-l-l," she drawled. "I don't know… you may have to bribe me…" She held out her arms and spread her legs.
She leaves me no choice, Ki thought calmly. Saying nothing, moving toward her, he focused the energy within him, sending all of it flooding into the fingers of his right hand. This was the force behind the unarmed combat system of te. It was what allowed a man to split a board, shatter a brick, or finger-slice through a man's chest to burst his heart. Ki had done the first two of these things many times — and that last thing once. Now, as he approached Celine's unsuspecting supine figure, he prepared himself to apply that same force to a far different task.
"Ki? Why are you smiling like that?" Celine asked. She shuddered, and tried to rise.
Ki pinned her down with his left hand firmly planted on her belly. He pressed the nail of his steel-stiff index finger against the core of Celine's sex, and then vibrated his digit to send waves of pleasure through her pelvis. In seconds she was caterwauling in the grip of yet another orgasm, her legs flailing in the air as she bucked like a wild horse. She floated in the ever-widening rings of warmth for another blissful minute before her eyes closed, and her snoring began again.
Ki kissed her feather-softly upon her brow before letting himself out of the room. He hoped she was in good with her boss. After that last trick — in Nippon it was called the 'vibrating beak' technique — women usually slept through the night.
Back in the corridor, with his gunbelt slung over his shoulder, Ki once again approached the door behind which the blond man had been taking his pleasure. Once again Ki made himself ready for his ninja attack. He set his gunbelt down, regulated his breathing, composed his mind, and reached out for the doorknob…
But once again his plans went awry. Before his own fingers could touch it, the doorknob began to turn. Somebody was leaving the room!
Ki flattened himself against the hinge side of the doorjamb. Out of the room came the brunette. He silently wished the American geisha an apology for what he was about to do. After all, the world was a strange place, and the spinning wheel of karma that controlled all people's lives could just as easily have ordained that this woman be his sweet Celine. Ki took one soundless step to synchronize his rhythms with those of his victim, and then rushed up behind her, one hand gently covering her eyes while the other found the atemi point at the side of her neck.
The frightened woman stiffened, but before she could find her voice, her knees sagged and she collapsed like a rag doll that had lost its stuffing. Ki swept her up into his arms before she could hit the floor, and carried her into a nearby vacant room. He set her down on the bed and then hurried out
to retrieve his gunbelt, strap it around his waist, and enter the blond man's room.
The stranger was stretched out nude upon the bed, his double gunbelt draped over the head of the brass bedstead, the grips of his revolvers within easy reach. All looked natural: a man, sexually exhausted, sleeping in a dark room. All looked natural…
But a ninja knew the difference between what was real and what only seemed real. Ki could tell the difference between real and faked sleep. A person truly dreaming is absolutely still. His bones and joints do not creak, and his snores are uneven. This man, Ki realized, was pretending to be asleep in order to get the drop on him. Nevertheless Ki pretended to be fooled by the ruse. It would be entertaining to experience the outcome of this little contest, for each man was an expert in some aspect of warrior hood, and each had an advantage over the other. The blond man had eyes grown accustomed to the darkness, and his nearby pistols. Ki had the quickness of wit to pretend to be fooled, and his atemi skills.
Of course, the blond stranger lying so quietly might only be pretending to be fooled by Ki's pretending. Ki was within three feet of the bed now. Another step and his adversary would be within reach.
With lizardlike speed, the blond man snapped out his right hand to pull a revolver from his gunbelt. Ki moved in to slam the edge of his palm against the stranger's wrist. It was the shuto-uchi, the "knife-hand strike," and its force sent the pistol skidding across the carpet before a shot could be fired.
"Scheiss!" breathed the man as he sat up. He brought his arm up and around to catch Ki in a headlock. The man was strong and knew how to use leverage. He twisted to pull Ki off balance and over the man's lap. His fist caught Ki twice against the side of the head, and made him see stars.
Ki jackknifed his legs up and over, to lock about the blond man's neck. Then it was his turn to twist, and the blond man was forced to break his hold on Ki as he went somersaulting toward the foot of the bed. The man's hands reached out to break his fall, in lieu of breaking his neck, and Ki's stiff fingers punched at a point just above the man's collar bone and to the right of his Adam's apple.
The blond man managed a last feeble jab at Ki's ribs as he faded into unconsciousness. The whole fight had taken less than ten seconds, and had been totally silent except for the light thud of the gun upon the soft carpet, the man's one whispered curse word, and the creaking of the bedsprings.
Gingerly rubbing at the bruise on his temple, Ki lit a candle and began to go through the blond man's belongings. The first thing he did was extract the other pistol from the gunbelt. If the blond man came to, Ki did not want him to have a gun within reach.
Ki carried the weapon over to the candle's flame in order to examine it. He'd never before seen such a weapon. The nickel-plated handgun looked to be a .38, but was smaller than a Colt of comparable caliber. Instead of wood or hard rubber handgrips, the pistol had a long, slender, rounded butt of filigreed metal. Ki searched for the catch and then broke open the pistol to extract its six shells. Then he closed it and experimentally worked the action. There were diagonal groovings on the outside of the revolver's cylinder. As the pistol was cocked and dry-fired, a pin in the frame moved back and forth, riding in these zigzag grooves, rotating the cylinder.
Ki tucked the emptied weapon into his gunbelt, at the small of his back, and continued his search through the man's clothes. There was nothing in his pockets or wallet to identify him, but Ki did find a yellowed, tattered newspaper clipping, folded into quarters and tucked into the watch pocket of the man's vest.
There was a photo pinned to the clipping. It was of the short, fat man whom Ki had earlier seen drinking downstairs in the saloon. Ki couldn't make out what the article was about, for it was written in German.
What he'd found were slim pickings, but intriguing ones. Perhaps Longarm could garner some clue from the unusual revolver; Jessica could certainly translate the German newspaper article.
Ki slipped out of the room and down along the corridor. He ambled down the stairs, keeping his hat pulled low and his eyes on the floor, meeting no one's gaze — assuming anyone was bothering to look at him — as he cut across the saloon and out the batwing double doors.
He began to walk down the wooden sidewalk, toward the Cattlemen's Association. He sensed a presence behind him and had begun to turn when he felt the cold, hard barrel of a gun thrust behind his ear, and froze in his tracks.
"That's right, chink," rumbled a familiar voice. "Thought it was you. We were having a drink when saw you leave."
"Hello, Higgins," Ki said. His eyes flicked right and left as two of the ex-foreman's men bracketed him on both sides. "It's no use pleading, you know. You will not get your job back."
"Just start walking, and turn into that alley coming up," Higgins snarled, careful to keep his cocked .45 pressed against Ki's head. "Once we're off the street, we'll see who does the pleading, boy."
Ki did as he was told. The street was deserted. At this hour, those not already in the Cattlemen's building for the meeting were whiling away the time in the Union or over in Canvas Town. Ki could not hope that a passerby, seeing what was going on, might help, or alert the town marshal. He was on his own against three men who had the drop on him.
The alley was narrow and dark; it snaked around behind the Union Saloon to end where a high wooden fence separated the saloon's property from the building next door. There was no first-floor back door into the saloon, but a wooden staircase led up to the second floor. Ki supposed this was built so the more illustrious members of the community could partake of the pleasures offered up there, then slip away unnoticed.
Higgins marched Ki up to the fence, then retreated a few paces, his two men on either side of him. He lowered his Peacemaker and said, "Turn around, chink!"
Ki turned slowly to face the three men. His back was against the fence. A beam of light spilling out of a window upstairs illuminated him as if he were in a spotlight. There was no place to run, and certainly no place to hide. "I noticed you're wearing a gun, boy." Higgins grinned like a man who has dealt himself a winning hand at poker. "I ain't never seen you wear one before, but seeing that you are, I figure it's plenty legal for me to call you out on account of that beating you gave me the other day." The big man glowered darkly. "You did that to me in front of Miss Starbuck, too." He gestured at his two men. "These fellows here will testify to old Farley that it was a fair enough shootout."
"But your gun is already in your hand," Ki observed quietly.
"Well now," Higgins chuckled. "Seeing as how I'm wearing a shoulder rig, and you've got your gun in a waist holster, I figure my holding my gun down at my side like this makes it fair enough." His two cronies smiled and shifted their weight from leg to leg like a pair of watchdogs straining at their leads.
"I cannot draw on you, Higgins," Ki said.
"Why not? You scared, boy?"
"You're so quick and all, you know, Chinaman?" one of the other men guffawed.
"If you're scared, you better start pleading." All traces of humor were gone from Higgins's face and voice. "I'll give you a few minutes to plead with me, on your knees…"
"I am not frightened," Ki said, folding his arms across his chest. "It is that my gun is not loaded. I only wore it so as not to attract attention to myself."
The men on either side of Higgins broke out into nervous laughter. "That's just too bad," the one who had spoken before said scornfully.
"Loaded or not, how was I to know you were telling the truth? Especially since you drew on me first. Right, boys?"
The two men nodded meaningfully, their eyes on Ki. their hands hovering near their own holstered Peacemakers.
Ki was amused by their agitation. "Tell me. where are your other two hounds, Ray and Musty? Just three of you against me seems like you are taking an awful chance…"
"They're taking care of that nosy federal marshal, Longarm," Higgins said. "Getting him out of the way, just like we're going to get you out of the way. Miss Jessie will be all alone. That'l
l make Danzig's job that much easier."
"Who is Danzig?" Ki asked, but he thought he knew. "That name sounds German," he mused out loud, noting with satisfaction Higgins's surprised look of unease.
"Never you mind who he is," the ex-foreman grumbled, clearly off balance.
"Very well," Ki said agreeably. "How did you find out Longarm was a federal marshal?"
"That was easy," Higgins boasted. "I checked out his horse the day he rode in with you and Miss Jessie. That gelding was carrying a U.S. brand. The Rangers got their own horses. That made Longarm either army or a federal man. I bet on the last, since he didn't carry himself like he was army." Higgins's eyes narrowed. "The time for talking's over, chink."
"Listen to me carefully," Ki addressed the one man who had remained silent throughout the entire exchange. "It is too late for Higgins, as I have already spared his life once."
"You'd do better to use your last time on earth praying to them ancestors of yours," Higgins interrupted angrily.
"And it is too late for this other," Ki continued unperturbed, "for he had insulted me, but you have said nothing. You may go, but you must leave now."
All three men only shook their heads in amazed disbelief. Ki still had his arms folded across his chest. His hands were nowhere near his gun.
"I'll say this for you," the man Ki had spoken to snorted in disbelief. "You're a brazen son of a bitch."
"He's a dead one!" Higgins spat, his voice thick with hate and tension as he brought up his .45.
Ki slid his arms apart so that the inner sides of his forearms and palms of his hands rubbed together. The smooth motion forced the two shuriken throwing blades out of the hidden sheaths sewn to the insides of his sleeves. His hands rose up, the blades — four-inch knives without hilt or handle — glinting in the light as they left his fingers.
The men on either side of Higgins spat blood instead of screams as Ki's shuriken flew to their throats. They were falling to the ground as Higgins fired.