by Jake Logan
“Oh, please, John, I want you inside me,” she begged.
He took her through one last convulsion and then withdrew his finger. He pushed one of her legs aside, and she moved the other one. He mounted her and dipped his loins. She lifted her hips to meet him, and he sank his cock past the folds of her pussy. He slid inside slowly, and she clawed his back with her trimmed fingernails, raking his flesh until it was coursed with white lines.
“Yes, yes,” she sighed, and let his weight fall on her body. He pumped into her with slow, steady strokes, and she screamed softly with each powerful thrust.
She was wet and warm, the satin lining of her sex smooth against the throbbing tumescence of his staff. He plumbed her depths, rising and falling in and out of her. She writhed and bucked beneath him, her sobs and sighs like the purr of a lioness. She gripped his hips and held him tight on the downstroke, then released him as he rose up again, only to plunge even deeper into the moist hot pudding of her sex.
He took it slow, forcing himself to hold back his seed. He was giving her pleasure and he wanted it to last. They fell into a rhythm of thrusting, yielding, their bodies melded into a single organism that rose and fell like the tide of the sea. She cried out when she spasmed with an orgasm, and he lost count of how many times she climaxed. Her body was sleek with sweat, and he rubbed her breasts with one hand, fondled her nipples until they were hard as acorns.
“Come, come,” she said finally, and squeezed his buttocks with both hands.
He thrust his cock deep into her, stopped, then fucked her very fast until she was screaming with pleasure. He felt his seed boiling in its pouch, and as it rushed to its tiny mouth, he plumbed her to the core of her cunt. He ejaculated inside her as she climaxed once again.
For that single moment, he was floating somewhere high above the earth, a god-being without weight, his senses teeming with bursts of unearthly energy, his entire body given up to that one incredible moment when silent explosions rocked his being and his brain.
She lay beneath him, her eyes wide with wonder, her mouth open in a breathless final spasm that rippled through her like a jet of pure flame.
Slocum rolled off her body, his limp manhood spilling out of her sheath, wet and shrunken. He lay beside her on his back and felt the craving for a cheroot. He suppressed the urge to smoke and just lay there in a state of peaceful lassitude.
“It must have been your green eyes,” she said, her voice soft in the moonlight.
“Huh?”
“Those green eyes of yours. They are so deep and mysterious, I just had to find out what you were like.”
“And?”
“You are unlike any other man I’ve ever known. I would compare you to my pa and my uncle, but there’s just no comparison. John, you have made me very happy.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “You’re quite a woman, Penny.”
“Thanks for that. I know you must have had many women and . . .”
He reached over and put a finger over her lips.
“Shh,” he said. “This is about you and me, Penny. This moment, this time. This beautiful time.”
She sighed.
“Ah, you make me feel so good inside. Thank you for saying that.”
“It’s what I feel. You’re a beautiful woman and you’ve made me very happy.”
“If you keep talking like that, I’ll want you again,” she said, a delicate gravel in her throat that made her words purr like a kitten.
“Give me time,” he said. “I know I want you again.”
“You don’t want to sleep?”
“Not yet,” he said.
His body was full of energy. He put a hand on her flat tummy and rubbed her there. She squirmed and made little sounds of pleasure that were not words, but animal noises that were beyond speech.
Her left hand floated to his loins. She grasped his lump of manhood and began to knead it with gentle rolls of her fingers.
Slocum felt his heart quicken. His blood seemed to turn hot. He reached over and fondled one of her breasts. The nipple hardened. He rubbed the tip of his finger over the rough nubbin.
“You’re stirring up something again,” she cooed.
“So are you,” he said as blood surged into his penis again and it began to elongate and stiffen.
“Is this all it takes?” she said.
“Just a touch,” he said. “Your touch.”
“It’s almost like magic,” she said, and laughed.
Slocum said nothing. She rose up and leaned over him. She planted a kiss on his lips and massaged his cock, stroking its length up and down as if it were a piston in her hand.
He felt her grip tighten, and her hand began to move even faster until he was rock hard once again.
“Careful,” he told her. “You may empty the vessel before you’ve had the chance to drink.”
She stopped jacking him off and pulled on him to mount her. She tugged at his hip until he rolled on top of her. She spread her legs, opening her lower body like a morning flower. He sank to her and she guided him inside. He slipped into the yearning cavern of her sex, and she tightened her muscles and gripped him. He stroked in and out of her in slow, steady probes. Her loins rose to meet his, and they set up a special and private rhythm as if they were reclining dancers moving to the slow strains of a musical composition.
“John,” she cooed. “It’s so good. I never knew it could be this good.”
They were both bathed in sweat, and the moonlight glistened on their naked bodies, imparting an unearthly glow that seemed to transport them into another dimension, a place where only they existed, a small and private place where the world outside had vanished, was invisible. She was soft, he was hard, and yet their twin passions blended like the night and the moonlight, two beings who had become a single glowing ember in a cluster of blazing suns.
He thought only of her during those moments. She was singular, yet she seemed to be an amalgam of all the women he had known, all the ones he had desired and conquered. He possessed her, but she possessed him, too. There was no time. No clocks chimed, no watches ticked. There was only the two of them on a timeless island in the midst of the universe, each moment precious, each one somehow eternal.
She squealed and cried out, then she screamed softly and groaned with each volcanic orgasm, a wildness in her that could not be tamed. He thrust deep into her and lingered as she convulsed in ecstasy, her pliant body quivering with the pleasure that shot through her, and when she reached a final pinnacle, his seed burst in its sac and spewed into her like warm honey, like the milk of mankind, and they shuddered together on that breathtaking summit, two souls that had become as gods, floating high above the world, part of the dark velvet of the night, illumined inside and out by billions of exploding stars.
They descended from the heights slowly, floating like feathery ashes from that magnificent bonfire of the senses where all reason was lost, and nothing mattered but that one exquisite moment, a moment so elusive it could never be caught or captured, lost to memory, lost to time itself.
They lay together in a peaceful lassitude and fell asleep, the perspiration drying on their skin as a warm breeze wafted through the window. He dreamed, and Penny was in the dream, and so was the blind horse and the river, the vast desert that bloomed with fiery flowers and pulsed with his own heartbeat like some ancient drum calling to him across the ages, and he was a child in Calhoun County, Georgia, before the war, and his mother was alive, and his father, his brother, and the woods grew into the desert and the tall pines grew out of solemn shadows and deer ran through the woods, their white tails flashing like lights bobbing on a lake.
He awoke before dawn, dressed, and strapped on his pistol. He tiptoed through the house and walked outside into the balmy predawn air, his nostrils full of the scent of sage and sand, of flower scents and the musty smell of horse droppings and his own dried sweat.
He lit a cheroot and pulled the smoke into his lungs.
He was full and he
was empty.
He thought of Penny, asleep inside, her father lost to laudanum, the house so still and quiet, it loomed gray in the moonlight and seemed full of a peace that could not be measured.
He walked toward the back of the house, where Ferro whickered at him and tossed his head in greeting. He stood there, listening to the far-off yap of a coyote, and let the smoke wreathe him with its filmy strands, the smell of it intoxicating in that warm air that seemed to cloak him with an almost palpable energy. He felt alive and vibrant with some mysterious force that flooded his bones, his muscles, the sinew that held them altogether.
Then, he heard it, a soft crisp crackle that was a footstep. He tensed for just a split second and then he heard the metallic snick of a pistol hammer being cocked.
He started to turn to face the danger he felt behind him, when something hard rammed him in the small of his back.
A thousand thoughts coursed through his brain at that moment with blinding speed and none of them made any sense.
“Mister, you even twitch and I’ll blow a hole in you big enough to drive a wagon through.”
Slocum froze and waited for the hammer to drop, for the sound of the explosion that would blot out all his senses and plunge his mortal self into the final everlasting abyss of death.
6
Slocum felt his pistol sliding from its holster as the man behind him lifted it free of the leather sheath.
“Let’s see them hands float skyward,” the voice behind him said.
Slocum raised his hands with the cheroot still stuck in his mouth. The smoke tore at his eyes like shaven onions.
“I’m not a twitcher,” Slocum said through half-clenched teeth.
“Turn around,” the voice said. “Real slow-like.”
Slocum turned around, his hands still held high. He felt the pressure of the gun barrel vanish from his back. Now, he stared at the man holding the pistol. In the dim light, he could see a grizzled face, most of it festooned in a long gray beard. The man’s eyes were two black sockets.
“You must be Obadiah Swain,” Slocum said.
There was a brief silence before the man said anything.
“You have the advantage, mister,” the man said.
“I’m John Slocum.”
“The name doesn’t ring any bells. What in hell are you doing in my brother’s house?”
“It’s a long story,” Slocum said.
“Well, you better give me some of it, because I don’t know who the hell you are, or what you’re doing here.”
“Penny asked me to stay. She rescued Jethro from the Socorro Saloon. He was kidnapped, drugged.”
“Jethro?”
“Yes. They tortured him. They wanted to know where they could find you.”
“Bastards,” Swain spat.
“Jethro’s in bad shape. Lucky that his daughter’s a nurse.”
“How do you figure in this, Slocum?”
“I met Penny with your brother down by the Rio Grande. I brought them here. Penny asked me to stay.”
“I been watching the house for some time,” Swain said. “And listening.”
Slocum said nothing.
Swain still had his pistol pointed at Slocum, and he had Slocum’s Colt in his left hand.
“You deflowered my niece,” Swain said, his voice flat and almost toneless.
“That would be the lady’s secret, Swain.”
“Except I know that you put the boots to her.”
“Again, you might want to ask Penny about such a delicate matter.”
“You talk like you might be a gentleman, sir.”
“I wouldn’t boast of such a label. I’m just a man,” Slocum said.
“Well, I’ll check your story. Meanwhile, I’ll hold on to your pistol until I verify what you told me.”
“That’s all right with me.”
“Just hold on there for a minute,” Swain said. He turned his head and let out a low whistle.
Two men emerged from the shadows of the lean-to and walked toward him. They carried rifles and wore pistols.
They came up to Swain and stood there.
“Juan,” Swain said, “you and Carlos guard the house. One in front, one in back.”
The two men nodded in unison.
“Come on, Slocum, let’s you and me go inside and see what’s what. You first.”
The two men walked single file to the front of the house, trailed by one of the Mexicans. Slocum went into the front room and stood in its center.
“Penny’s probably still asleep,” Slocum whispered.
“Light one of them lamps,” Swain said.
Slocum’s cheroot had gone out. He set the butt in an ashtray and lit one of the lamps on a table near the sofa.
“Where’s Jethro? In that little room where Penny keeps all her medicants?”
“Yes,” Slocum said.
“Let’s look in on him. Walk easy, Slocum.”
“She gave him laudanum, so he’s probably still conked out,” Slocum said.
Swain motioned for him to move, and Slocum walked down the hall to the sick room.
Penny stood next to her father’s bed. A lamp glowed with a yellow light and cast her shadow on the wall.
“Uncle Obie,” she said in a calm voice. “I’m glad you came. Pa’s just barely awake. Put away that gun, will you?”
“I just ain’t sure about Slocum here,” Swain said. “I want to check out his story.”
“Whatever John told you is true,” she said. “He saved our lives.”
“If you say so,” Swain said. He holstered his pistol. Slocum stared at him, then dropped his eyes to his own pistol. Swain handed it over, butt first, and Slocum slipped it back in his holster.
He looked into Swain’s eyes. They were blue, like his brother’s and his niece’s. There were wrinkles at the edges, and Slocum saw the pink of his lips peeking from his full beard. He didn’t resemble Jethro, but their faces both had a similar shape, and his dark hair was streaked and peppered with graying strands. His face, the portions that showed, was deeply tanned, as was his wattled neck and hands, his forearms. He was wearing loose clothing that was flaked with reddish and brown dust. He wore work boots that were scuffed and dusty, well worn.
Swain walked over to be closer to Jethro. He gazed down at his brother and took off his battered felt hat, which bore sweat stains around the brim.
He leaned over until his face was inches from Jethro’s.
“Brother, can you hear me?” Swain said.
Jethro’s eyelids fluttered like tiny wings. His eyes opened and Obadiah recoiled as if shocked at what he saw. Jethro’s eyes were wet and red-veined as if they had been boiled and steamed. Shadows flickered in their pale blue depths and fixed on Obadiah’s face in a locked stare.
“Obie?” The voice that came out of Jethro’s clenched throat was raspy and seemed disembodied as if it had come from a different place.
“Yeah, Jethro, it’s me,” Swain said. He put a hand on his brother’s, a gentle touch that was meant to comfort the injured man. “You feelin’ better now?”
“Where am I? I—I don’t remember much. Cigarettes burnin’ me. All over.”
Obadiah looked over at Penny, his eyebrows arched like the upper curves of question marks.
“They tortured Pa,” she said.
Obadiah swore under his breath. He patted Jethro’s hand and stood up.
“You’re safe now, brother. You’re home. Penny is takin’ care of you.”
Jethro closed his eyes. He seemed to drift off somewhere, his features a blank mass of discolored putty, gray and bluish, purple and brownish. His lips were cracked and there was a line of feverish sweat just above them.
“He needs rest more than anything,” Penny said.
Penny and Obadiah walked from the room. Slocum followed them, the scent of alcohol and medicinal salve strong in his nostrils. The lamp burned on, leaking spiderwebs of smoke through its blackening chimney. He left the door open.
“You want some coffee, Uncle Obie?” Penny asked. “John?”
“I could use a taste,” Swain said.
Slocum nodded as he studied Swain, who had placed his hat back on his head. He looked a hundred years old in the lamplight, but Slocum saw a wiry, energetic man who wasn’t much older than Jethro. No more than a year or two, he figured. Swain leaned back in the overstuffed chair, one that he seemed used to, and stretched out his legs.
“What’s that blind horse doin’ out there in the stalls?” Swain asked.
“I’m supposed to kill it. I got him in Fort Craig. The liveryman didn’t have the heart to shoot it.”
“I saw the Army brand on its hip.”
“That blind horse got us here.”
“You going to shoot it?”
“I haven’t decided,” Slocum said. “That horse got us all here.” He looked at Penny, who nodded in agreement.
“If John hadn’t helped Pa and me, we’d probably both have been kidnapped or killed. We were followed here and John stood them off.”
“What do you mean?” Obie asked.
Penny told him about Shadow and Roger Degnan.
“That’s Roger’s pistol over on that table,” she said. “He dropped it when John shot him.”
Swain walked over and picked up the converted Remington.
“That’s Roger’s pistol all right,” he said. “That kid ain’t right in the head. He’s plugged a couple of people that I know of. Drunks who couldn’t defend themselves. His brother Patrick ain’t no better. Worse, maybe.”
Swain set the pistol down and walked over to Slocum, looked down at him.
“Son, looks to me like you stirred up a hornet’s nest. The Degnans, Patrick and Roger, are bad enough, but Morgan Sombra, good old Shadow, is one mean sonofabitch. And if you plugged Roger, it’s for sure old Paddy Degnan will be on you like a streak of lightning.”
“Roger made the first move,” Slocum said. “If I hadn’t shot him, I’d be six feet under by now.”